Early Reading
Phonics and Early Reading at Chandos
The phonics and reading scheme that we use at Chandos is Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. We use this mostly in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Elements of the program may be used in Years 3 to 6.
How does Little Wandle work at Chandos and at home?
Daily phonics sessions as a whole class
Children will also have daily or weekly keep up sessions as required
3 small group reading sessions weekly. Each day will focus on a different reading skill.
Day 1- Decoding
This gives the children the opportunity to practice reading all the sounds and words the book uses.
Day 2- Prosody
Prosody is the expression we use when reading which makes it sound more interesting.
Day 3- Comprehension
During comprehension reading sessions, children learn to understand what they are reading and practice answering questions about it.
Little Wandle books will be sent home weekly so children can practice reading with an adult at home. The children read these books in groups at school so it is important every book comes back to school to make sure every child in group has their own book to read. We appreciate parents and carers support with this to make sure every child at Chandos has the best possible chance of becoming a confident reader. Class teachers will inform teachers of the allocated day weekly to return the books, this will also be published in our weekly newsletter.
Children will also bring a book they have chosen from their class library. They are not expected to be able to read this book, it is for them to enjoy with an adult at home.
The words from your child's reading book will also be sent home weekly so you can practice reading them
Each child has a home reading diary so parents can record when they have read their child's library book or Little Wandle book at home. Parent's can write a comment in the diary about the book or even draw a smiley face as a record of this. Teacher's will respond weekly with a stamp or sticker.
Here is how we say the sounds taught in Reception
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2
Phase 3 sounds taught in Reception Spring 1
Here is how we say the sounds taught in Year 1
Phase 5 sounds taught in Year 1
Learning tricky words
Tricky words are high frequency words which means they appear commonly in books. Little Wandle has a special code to be able to read these words but they are known as 'tricky' because children may not have been taught all the sounds they need yet in order to red these common words. Below is a video explaining how we teach children how to read these tricky words as well as the the words taught in Reception and Year 1.
Support for tricky words Reception Autumn term
Support for tricky words Reception Spring term
Support for tricky words Reception Summer term
Support for tricky words for Year 1
Phonics and Early Reading Policy
Readopted September 2023
To find out more information on how we prepare our Nursery children for Little Wandle please look at our Foundations for Phonics Page
For more information...
Miss Devlin is our English lead.
Please feel free to speak to her with any questions that you may have.